The present invention relates to computer networks and, in particular, to a message system which integrates voice, fax, and electronic mail and which efficiently serves users of a particular large geographical area which generally includes two or more metropolitan regions.
For several years now, people have been leaving voice messages recorded by telephone answering devices for intended telephone recipients. Since the earliest telephone answering devices, people have wanted remote access to their telephone messages, and numerous telephone answering devices have provided such remote access. More recently, facsimile transmission devices known commonly as fax machines have proliferated and are growing significantly in their use. Ever increasingly, attempted fax transmissions are finding busy signals. Accordingly, fax messages, in which a fax transmission is recorded remotely and subsequently transmitted to the intended receiver when available, are gaining in popularity. In addition to voice and fax mail, the popularity of electronic mail, i.e., e-mail, has grown tremendously in recent years. Thus, the means by which people receive messages from machines is growing significantly.
In addition, the mechanisms by which messages are stored and retrieved are generally independent of one another and accessed differently. For example, many people have telephone answering devices in their homes and/or offices to record telephone messages in their absence. Meanwhile, fax answering devices in the home or office are generally not useful since a fax machine can receive a transmission at any time. Accordingly, fax transmissions are generally recorded off site if the intended recipient fax machine is busy. Electronic mail generally never travels over telephone equipment, except perhaps for retrieval to a home computer through a dial-up connection to the Internet or other data-centric network, and is instead transmitted through a data-centric network. A data-centric network is a network which carries digital data, primarily to facilitate information exchange among computers and computer peripherals. Examples include distributed computer networks such as the Internet. By contrast, a telephony-centric network is a network which carries telephony information such as voice, fax, page messages encoded as dual tone multiple frequency (DTMF) signals, etc., primarily to facilitate information exchange among telephony devices. Telephony devices include such things as telephones, cellular telephones, pagers, and videophones.
What is needed is an integrated message system in which all messages, whether voice, fax, or e-mail, can be accessed using a single user interface and access medium.
In accordance with the present invention, an integrated message system receives and stores telephonic and data messages through a telephony-centric network and a data-centric network, respectively, and provides voice access through the data-centric network. As a result, the familiar message access of an ordinary telephony-centric network is provided through a data-centric network, e.g., the Internet. As a result, a user""s messages can be retrieved via a voice interface through the Internet from anywhere in the world toll-free. In addition, the message system provides a gateway to the telephony-centric network, e.g., the public switched telephone network, such that the user can respond to messages from anywhere in the world through the Internet for the same toll charges that would accrue to the user for responding to the messages from home or the home office.
In particular, the message system receives a voice call through the Internet using any of a number of Internet voice connectivity applications currently available and responds to the voice call as if the voice call were received through the telephony-centric network. In addition, the message system provides a number of outgoing telephone lines which connect to the telephony-centric network and enable outbound telephone calls. By coupling the outbound telephone lines with an inbound voice connection through the data-centric network, the message system provides a gateway between the data-centric and telephony-centric networks and allows a single voice connection to be established through the data-centric network for retrieving one or more messages and responding to each of the one or more messages by placing outbound telephone calls on the telephony-centric network.